- The seven-seat Škoda Peaq traveled 582 miles, beating its WLTP range by 45%.
- Secondary roads, dry weather, and careful hypermiling made the record possible.
- The Peaq averaged 9.2 kWh/100 km.
We all know by this point that official range ratings are more like suggestions than hard-and-fast guarantees. However, beating a car's WLTP range by almost half is still remarkable, and that’s what a production-spec Škoda Peaq 90 did on a carefully calculated hypermiling run.
Two of the manufacturer's employees drove the SUV for 582 miles (936 km) without recharging, which is 179 miles (289 km)—or 45%—more than its WLTP range of 402 miles (647 km). This was achieved in a standard vehicle with a 91-kilowatt-hour battery pack and a usable capacity of 86 kWh, with no modifications.
Skoda did it by using AI to plot a route from Mladá Boleslav, where the car was built, into the Netherlands that completely avoided high-speed highway driving. It chose secondary roads with light traffic, and drivers maintained as constant a speed as traffic allowed, doing their best to avoid hard acceleration, heavy braking, and complete stops.
Škoda notes that dry weather also helped, acknowledging that wet roads would have made the result impossible. It didn’t disclose the car’s average speed. It did, however, reveal that the Peaq averaged 9.2 kWh/100 km, or about 6.8 miles/kWh.
The journey began at noon on Tuesday and ended on Wednesday afternoon, with multiple driver changes and an overnight rest. Completing the trip quickly wasn’t a priority. The original destination was Amsterdam, around 530 miles (850 km) from the starting point.
However, after reaching the Netherlands with more charge remaining than expected, the crew decided to extend the journey by another 28 miles (50 km) and ended up in the seaside resort of Zandvoort. For the last few miles of the journey, the car showed no remaining range and 0% state of charge, but it was driven until it wouldn’t move anymore.
Gallery: Skoda Peaq 90 Efficiency Run
BMW previously attempted something similar with an iX3 50 xDrive. Its engineers covered 1,007.7 km, or 626 miles, from Debrecen, Hungary, to Munich, arriving with 2% charge remaining. BMW says its team also mostly used country roads, kept the climate control, seat heating, and infotainment off, and stopped overnight.
It also sounds like the range test General Motors did last year, when its engineers drove a Chevrolet Silverado EV more than 1,000 miles by not exceeding 25 mph. These tests probably don't reflect the kind of range you're likely to see in the real world. But there's still a lesson here: If you really want to boost your range, try driving slower.
